By BILL VIRGIN, P-I COLUMNIST

Published 10:00 pm, Monday, June 25, 2007

Put samples of half a dozen or so mass-market American beers before a panel of drinkers in a blind taste test, and even the most confirmed quaffers would be lucky to match two to the right brand.

But put half a dozen or so mass-market American beer advertising slogans or jingles before a panel of testers, and even teetotalers with some exposure to media would come close to a perfect score.

Try it yourself:

It's the water

From the land of sky-blue waters

The beer that made Milwaukee famous

The one beer to have when you're having more than one

The king of beers

The champagne of beers

That even non-imbibers would score well on such a quiz (some of you are not just humming the melody of the jingle but finishing out the verse) is testimony not only to the pervasive nature of mass-market advertising channels when combined with a memorable message. It's also evidence of the power of advertising to create brand identity -- and customer loyalty -- out of what is basically a commodity product, in which one brand is largely indistinguishable from another.

Oh, sure, beer drinkers will swear they can taste the difference between the brand they're loyal to and Bud and Miller and Coors and Michelob and Pabst and Rainier and a dozen more beer brands. They can't -- which accounts for the success of the craft brews and microbrews, as well as the imports.

What those drinkers are really loyal to is the image created by the various advertising campaigns.

In a sense it's not much different from the customer loyalty created for brands of gasoline. Although loyalists may claim there's a noticeable difference in brands, there really isn't -- or better not be, if the gasoline is going to work at all with a variety of makes and ages of engines.

What gasoline buyers are really loyal to are location, credit-card programs and price. And while gasoline brands have over the years had some memorable campaigns and slogans, they've been nowhere close to the power of beer campaigns in grabbing a share of the customers' minds and stomachs.

Further evidence of that is provided in two books with almost identical titles published in recent years on the subject: "Great American Beers: Twelve Brands That Became Icons" by Bill Yenne, and the more recent "Great American Beer" by Christopher O'Hara, which, in a bit of one-upsmanship, has as its subtitle, "50 Brands That Shaped the 20th Century."

So what was the secret behind the ability of beer marketers to create both identity and loyalty?

O'Hara credits nostalgia. "Whether it is a memory of your father sipping beer in his armchair, a television beer commercial, or a fondness for a local sports team's brew of choice, there is something about these classic American beers that resonates within us," he says in the introduction.

Both O'Hara and Yenne also credit regionalism, reflecting a time when each region of the country had its own dominant brands (such as the Northwest's Rainier and Olympia, neither of which are brewed in the state today).

"Today's craft beers and microbrews have rich and delicious flavors, as well as exquisite variety," Yenne writes. "Today's mass-marketed megabrews have enormous advertising budgets, ubiquitous market penetration, and a flavor-neutral taste. The great regional brands discussed in this volume had soul. ... The beers themselves identified with their region, and in turn, the people identified with their regional brews."

Some of those regional names have been continued or revived, although under the umbrella of large brewing conglomerates, most notably Pabst. So potent is the combination of nostalgia, regionalism and advertising that people still remember "their" brand, even if they couldn't pick that beer out of a tasting lineup.

By the way, the answers to the quiz above are, in order: Olympia, Hamm's, Schlitz, Schaefer, Budweiser and Miller. If you scored poorly, your beer-drinking and pop-culture credentials will be placed under review. If you scored well, we'll pour you a celebratory mug of your favorite brew. Really, it's your brand, we swear. We know we can't fool you.